Is the Bible an Allegory?
In literature, allegories are carefully crafted fiction stories meant to teach something real. Think of Pilgrim’s Progress, where a man named Christian walks a symbolic path representing the Christian life. Or Animal Farm, where animals represent political ideologies. These stories aren’t true in a historical sense, but they communicate ideas through symbolism and imagery.
Those are made-up tales where the people and places stand for something deeper. They're powerful tools, but they aren't historical.
The Bible doesn’t work that way. It gives us real people in real places experiencing real events—all orchestrated by a sovereign God who not only rules history, but fills it with meaning. In fact, often the true stories in the Old Testament picture a New Testament truth.
The Bible is truth layered with even more truth. The people in its pages are real. The events actually happened. Jesus really lived, died and rose again. David really stood before Goliath. The Red Sea really parted. The flood, the Exodus, the exile, the resurrection—these are not metaphors. They are history.
In this true history, God’s brilliance shines blindingly bright. The Bible is a masterpiece of how God painted meaning into the very fabric of real events. In Galatians 4:24, when Paul refers to the story of Hagar and Sarah as an allegory, he isn’t denying it took place. He’s showing us that God arranged even the details of history to reflect spiritual realities. Hagar represents the bondage of the law, Sarah the freedom of the promise. Both women lived real lives. And yet their stories pointed forward to something eternal. That’s how God works. He doesn’t need to invent fiction to make His point. He paints in providence.
Look at Joseph’s life. Sold by his brothers, falsely accused, forgotten in prison, then raised to power to save the very ones who rejected him. That’s not an allegory. It’s a true story. But it also points beautifully to Jesus—the rejected One who saves.
Or take the bronze serpent in the wilderness in Numbers 21. The people of Israel were dying from serpent bites, and God told Moses to lift up a brass serpent on a pole. Whoever looked at it would live. And then, centuries later, Jesus said in John 3:14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” That moment in Numbers wasn’t fiction. It was a foreshadowing.
Or consider the Passover lamb: A real lamb, slain for each Jewish household in Egypt so the judgment would pass over. The event in Exodus 12 was real, set to point directly to “Christ our Passover,” as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:7.
God gets the glory for all of this. Only a sovereign Artist could paint with the brushstrokes of history—layering color, light and shadow to reveal eternal truth. Every scene, every figure, every detail is placed with purpose. Not imagined, but orchestrated. Not symbolic fiction, but reality shaped by the hand of God to reflect something far greater that fully comes into the light for us far later.
Literary allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress is brilliant. But God is far more brilliant. The Bible is the living, breathing, truthful Word of God.
R&J Shee